There's a dancing curtain of aurora borealis. And stars seemingly swarming all around.

This is Earth, as seen from hundreds of kilometres away, by a handful of its most fortunate citizens.

We should all see the world from this vantage.

It may, in fact, do us a world of good.

"When we look down on the Earth from space, we see this indescribably beautiful planet," says astronaut Ron Garan in a short documentary released at the end of last year called Overview. "It looks like a living, breathing organism. But it also at the same time looks extremely fragile."

Indeed, that staggering perspective, dubbed 'the overview effect', may be the most enduring legacy of space travel — the sense of a home that is intimately shared.

"We're all basically living in this one eco-system called Earth," Garan adds. "And everything you do on one side of the eco-system affects the other side."

That sense of interdependence drives the film's powerful environmental message — understanding borne of a stellar perspective. But it's a perspective that one doesn't need to leave the Earth to gain.